Inside Skunk Works: Ed Ludlow takes Bloomberg Tech to Lockheed's secret shop
The Defense Tech Special brought in Lockheed's OJ Sanchez and Sarah Hiza alongside the heads of drone-defense company Fortem and manufacturing startup Divergent.
Bloomberg TechStory of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
Bloomberg Defense Tech Special
Ed Ludlow did not anchor from San Francisco for the Defense Tech Special. He went to Skunk Works, the Lockheed Martin unit in Southern California behind the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird, and the show he hosted there on October 2 became the channel's most watched upload of the week, past 55,000 views four days on.
The guest list made it a full defense hour. Aeronautics president OJ Sanchez talked about Vectis, an autonomous aircraft Lockheed is building ahead of formal Pentagon requirements, with a single F-35 eventually able to control as many as eight of them. Sarah Hiza said the company uses 55 different language models and that OpenAI is working with the F-35 team on math and physics problems tied to advanced sensors. Fortem's Jon Gruen covered drone warfare, and Divergent's Lukas Czinger explained how his startup aims to build weapons faster and cheaper. Chief executive Jim Taiclet got his own clip, about pushing the whole company to move at Skunk Works speed.
The comment section turned into a debate about the industry itself. Many viewers bring up Anduril and Palmer Luckey as the reason the big contractors are changing, others raise the cost of a Tomahawk, and one remembers Kelly Johnson, the engineer who founded Skunk Works.
The show was one of fifteen uploads in the week. Monday's full episode, with Mark Gurman on Apple chief executive John Ternus putting design back at the center and a segment on tech billionaires' record year, got off to a quick start. Daily views sat below their usual level for the channel, which added about 1,000 subscribers. Across the business channels near its size, nearly everyone ran quieter than usual, with Frugal Fit Mom one of the few above its normal pace.
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What viewers say
Fascinating to get this kind of access inside Skunk Works. The pace of innovation in defense tech right now is remarkable.
@nextgenfirepowerSee it on YouTubeWhere is Kelly Johnson when you need him
@BlueCollarLaughsSee it on YouTube
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- Channel
- Bloomberg Tech
- Subscribers
- 740,000 ▲ 1,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 805,769
- Videos published this week
- 15
- Video published
- October 2, 2026
- Video views so far
- 55,173
- Views on its first day
- 14,376
The numbers
Here is how Bloomberg Tech's week looks in figures.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which jet fighter did Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works team design in 1943, famously in about five months?
The XP-80 was Skunk Works' first project, designed and built in roughly 143 days in 1943, and it became America's first operational jet fighter.
